Post a controversial music opinion

people write music for other people

sometimes Mike Patton writes it for nobody

I never write music at all.

I haven't been following the thread but I want to know if is a controversial opinion to imply some major label music is written or at least produced specifically with target demographics in mind? Or is the belief that this sort of thing only happens exclusively outside of the studio? Not referring to any aforementioned artists here btw

― Evan, Tuesday

The passive voice in your first sentence does a lot of work. Madonna, Swift, etc. don't sit down with producers and write music for a demographic -- why would they? They want streams, and before streams they wanted CD/download sales from as many people as possible. How a record company promotes them, though, addresses your point.

the slew of ppl in here trying to make a better, less intentionally shitty point than Austin was ever actually attempting have strange instincts

I think the difference has been covered upthread, but think of that one classic Kids in the Hall sketch, the Doors one.

where the guy says he's gonna buy their Greatest Hits, and the clerk angrily says "GREATEST HITS ARE FOR HOUSEWIVES AND LITTLE GIRLS" in an angry bellow. is he saying that because he's suggesting greatest hits are shit because they're geared towards mere "housewives and little girls', who couldn't obviously appreciate the Doors, or was he just stating a fact, demographically, at who Greatest Hits were marketed towards, and his yelling and intense behavior towards the customer was just how impassioned he gets when he talks about music industry metadata?

again the cushion of plausible deniability has shifted since that classic sketch and it's not there today

I'm not suggesting there's plausible deniability at all! the clerk in the sketch was a gigantic dick.

a dickish record store clerk?! Un-possible.

I SELL SOUND

my main point is I think some people itt are asking "well isn't there some circumstance where it's ok to talk about whom the music is geared towards?" which wasn't really present in the context of Austin's OP. which was definitely similar to the clerk from the Doors sketch, as how I read it.

not wanting to pile on further , I do like Austin and I'm sure by now he regrets it, hoping he just comes back and offers a mea culpa and that's that.

the only correct "<music> is for <people>" statement is "FALSE METAL is for POSERS" btw

can we go back to the Biggie post now

the only correct "<music> is for <people>" statement is "FALSE METAL is for POSERS" btw

― he's very big in the region of my butthole (Neanderthal), Tuesday, February 1, 2022 2:35 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

what about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTJ5Cs7TDNs

Ready to Die is a seminal album for me, but I understand somebody not hearing what I do. Buying Life After Death first, I found Biggie on RTD less...languid? It took a couple listens to tracks like "The What" and "Juicy" and "One More Chance" I had on mixtapes to appreciate it.

Wu Tang is for the children iirc

xp sorry i'm still posting about this

i think it's kind of funny how supposedly cynical marketing instincts are tied with fakeness are tied with comittees are tied with femaleness (because when is a woman pop star in control of her songwriting?) are tied with grifting and when you look at a masculine counter-example like, say, spoon, they're doing it for the music and their audience is music-appreciators. as if spoon couldn't possibly be considering their audience's tastes and desires when making an album. there is a funny 'protected innocence' aspect to it. so many men use this kind of discourse to sell music to men based on this desire for innocence and purity. talk about a grift lol. the disingenuousness is obvious and indeed this has all been pointed out hundreds maybe thousands of times on this board, usually much clearer than here, for 20 fucking years now.

oh great, here we go with 1000 posts about spoon when all you need is a forks

I missed the Biggie post. and it's a good thing cos my blood pressure is already high enough and I'm captain save-a-smalls

(though there are posts from me in 2004 under another dn bashing Biggie and I want them erased)

back to basics, just four guys in a room, grifting

xp: it’s like raaaaaaaaaaiiiiin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOo4e5fPVQ4

https://www.trendstees.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/John-Lennon-broke-up-Fluxus.jpg

Yoko Ono is a terrible artist and was the main factor in the break-up of the Beatles.
Pink Floyd only became good after Syd left.

These might be controversial on ILX but out in the real world they certainly aren't. Ditto 'music for teenage girls' comment. These are just bog standard boring old boomer fart opinions.

So darken your clothes, or strike a violent pose
Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me

These might be controversial on ILX but out in the real world they certainly aren't. Ditto 'music for teenage girls' comment. These are just bog standard boring old boomer fart opinions

I have no dog in the 'music for teenage girls' fight, but as for the opinions I expressed, I made that exact point in my post - they're controversial in here, but not out there. And as far as I'm concerned it's the real world that's right and ILX that is wrong. I have no problem with being described as a boring old boomer fart, in my ways that's exactly what I am.

It was kind of a drag when record stores used to keep Taylor Swift CDs in the "Young Adult" section.

Is this for real(?) I’ve never seen a “Young Adult” section in a record store!

I went to the Idiots section of the record store and then realized I was at Cracker Barrel

I have no dog in the 'music for teenage girls' fight, but as for the opinions I expressed, I made that exact point in my post - they're controversial in here, but not out there. And as far as I'm concerned it's the real world that's right and ILX that is wrong. I have no problem with being described as a boring old boomer fart, in my ways that's exactly what I am.

― joni mitchell jarre (anagram),

why on earth would you align yourself with "out there"?

when you look at a masculine counter-example like, say, spoon, they're doing it for the music and their audience is music-appreciators. as if spoon couldn't possibly be considering their audience's tastes and desires when making an album.

This reminds me of an interview w/Frank Black, talking about his Pixies songwriting, where he said something like (I'm paraphrasing from memory) - "I make sure to throw in some surreal bullshit, because that's what the college kids go for."

Is this for real(?) I’ve never seen a “Young Adult” section in a record store!

It was usually next to the Romance section

i think it's kind of funny how supposedly cynical marketing instincts are tied with fakeness are tied with comittees are tied with femaleness (because when is a woman pop star in control of her songwriting?) are tied with grifting and when you look at a masculine counter-example like, say, spoon, they're doing it for the music and their audience is music-appreciators.

How about the 10,000 clone-stamp bro-country singers who are so faceless and interchangeable the only way you can pick one out of the pack is when he foolishly allows the racism to metastasize from subtext to text.

the disingenuousness is obvious and indeed this has all been pointed out hundreds maybe thousands of times on this board, usually much clearer than here, for 20 fucking years now.

― Nedlene Grendel as Basenji Holmo (map),

Simon Frith has been beating this drum since at least 1978!

"springsteen is the real grifter"

nashville music machine is 100% a grift

all of life in all its facets is Grift

How about the 10,000 clone-stamp bro-country singers who are so faceless and interchangeable the only way you can pick one out of the pack is when he foolishly allows the racism to metastasize from subtext to text.

― but also fuck you (unperson),

I'm pretty sure, having spent hundreds of hour distinguishing Walker Hayes from Lee Brice, that the country men form part of a cynical marketing campaign.

I probably posted this before, but I went to some drive-in movie event sponsored by Chevrolet and they were just blasting bro country the whole night & then I realized that every single song mentioned a "Chevy" and I pretty much realized immediately that any of the post Big&Rich country poptimism (that I also engaged in, tbf) was a huge fucking mass delusion and total mistake

tis a grift to be simple
tis a grift to be free

lol

my huge controversial opinion is that Salieri deliberately killed Mozart by giving him too many assignments

drove my Chevy to the levee

I haven't been following the thread but I want to know if is a controversial opinion to imply some major label music is written or at least produced specifically with target demographics in mind? Or is the belief that this sort of thing only happens exclusively outside of the studio? Not referring to any aforementioned artists here btw

― Evan, Tuesday

The passive voice in your first sentence does a lot of work. Madonna, Swift, etc. don't sit down with producers and write music for a demographic -- why would they? They want streams, and before streams they wanted CD/download sales from as many people as possible. How a record company promotes them, though, addresses your point.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 1, 2022 2:25 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just wanted to know the consensus! I didn't really have a point to make. I know that the work I do designing commercialized retail packaging for corporate brands gives me insight into a lot of demographic and market research early in the development and I could imagine large music companies treating pop stars just like those brands, shaping them into the perceived perfect product based on testing and projections etc. and not necessarily being hands off only until after the music is made in the studio. Again not talking about anyone in particular, though the recent country clone examples seem like a good candidate.

i lowkey got obsessed with a recent stupid fucking nashville grift machine track "you time" by the american idol man that looks like a little boy and the video is literally him showing up to the studio in his pjs being like "ok what we recording today... ok later!" and like the dudes writing the song for him. hey it's honest work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxpFNYfePHk

all good xpost

Madonna, Swift, etc. don't sit down with producers and write music for a demographic -- why would they? They want streams, and before streams they wanted CD/download sales from as many people as possible. How a record company promotes them, though, addresses your point.

There was a fair bit of discussion in Nothing But a Good Time, the hair metal oral history, about how bands would often e.g. intentionally write power ballads (that they sometimes weren't crazy about themselves) in order to target teenaged girls; they'd release two harder songs first for the boys and then cross over with the ballad as the third single.

that's true

laurie anderson did a series of concerts in 2015 of music made stictly for dogs

Brian Wilson wrote symphonies that were only for God